


Winning the War

by reapertownusa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Dark, Depression, Gen, Grief, Harm to Children, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Murder, One Shot, PTSD, Rape/Non-con References, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Tragedy, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 22:08:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reapertownusa/pseuds/reapertownusa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean struggles to live in the world he and Sam saved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winning the War

**Author's Note:**

> Post Season 5 AU.
> 
> Warnings: References violent minor character deaths and sexual assault. Self-harm and suicidal desires.

They had won the war, saved the world and stopped Lucifer. It didn’t stand for crap. There was no prize, no peace. There was just a price to be paid and he didn’t even get to be the one to pay it. He had never been anything but Fate’s bitch and now even she was through with him.

If he thought anyone was listening, the only prayer he’d have on his lips would be for the ground to open up and swallow him – to suck him into the same howling chasm that had swallowed his brother. Sam was burning and all Dean wanted was to be burning beside him. There was nothing for him here on earth, not anymore.

His finger had tensed on the pistol’s trigger, but taking the shot wouldn’t help. Nothing could end this. They’d shoot him up to heaven even after he’d painted the walls with his brains. Damn angels never could take a hint. They thought that was his reward.

In their minds he’d given everything so he could spend eternity separated from the only things he’d ever cared about reliving bad home movies like it meant something. The only freedom he’d ever had was in hell. At least there he could forget rather than being suffocated by the memories of what he’d never again have.

Dried blood still caked his hands. It would never wash clean. He could strip the skin from his bones and the stains would remain. His family had been sacrificed to Fate and in the end, there was no plan, no meaning. There were just random acts of violence punctuated by people fighting like hell to struggle through one more day. They should have let the world burn. It would have been a mercy kill.

“I know you’re not ready to talk, but is there someone who can take you home?”

Dean’s eyes remained staring far beyond the scuffed floor beneath his feet. It took a long moment for the full irony of the question to sink in. When it did he laughed a chuckle so dry it hurt his own ears. Home. That was funny. For the first time in nearly a lifetime he’d had a home. Now the bedroom carpet was brown with dried blood soaked clear to the floorboards and there’d be no getting every bit of flesh out of the drywall.

When his hand ran over his face it found his cheeks dry only because there was nothing in him left to cry. He squeezed his eyes closed against the psych evaluator’s worried face. When she crouched down in front of the chair he’d collapsed into hours earlier, he turned his head away.

“You at least need to get washed up.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Dean’s voice felt foreign from disuse. It sounded as empty as his body felt. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

He stiffly pushed out of the squeaky vinyl chair. It was the last wretched hospital seat he’d ever sit in. Unless Bobby resurfaced from bumfuck nowhere there was no one else to watch die. That was the only thing he had to be thankful for.

The woman quickly stood, slipping her clipboard back beneath her arm as she smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt. “Mr. Winchester, you can’t drive.”

“I got a license that says I can,” he replied without looking back.

“You’re in no condition. There has to be someone you can call.”

People always said that. It was like they honestly believed that everyone had someone. They didn’t. The world was full of desperate, lonely sons of bitches. Six billion people were still alive because of what he and his brother had sacrificed and there wasn’t one of those souls he could call and expect to pickup a phone.

He let the pointless argument die into silence and made for the door faster than the evaluator’s tall high heels could click after him. There was no direction to his steps. It wasn’t like he had anywhere to go. He didn’t remember where he’d parked the car. He didn’t even care.

Angels and demons, Lucifer and the apocalypse – it had been too big. He’d only been a pawn in that. All he could affect was here on earth. After taking on the four horsemen, heaven and hell, he couldn’t manage to be there to stop one human. Sam was suffering eternal torment so a random bastard could break into his home, so that man could rape Lisa before shooting her full of buckshot, before.... That was the world they’d given everything for.

Rage was the only thing that still boiled in his cold blood. It was the only thing he felt even as he drove his tightly curled fist into brick with every ounce of strength he had. He heard the crack. Distantly he saw the fresh blood seep through split skin, flowing over the dried blood of Lisa and Ben. He saw it, but didn’t feel it.

His left fist followed up. The crunching of every bone in his body would never be enough. The stunned dull ache that bloomed to blinding white hot pain could never make up for any of it. Not for Dad, not for Jo and Ellen, Sam and Adam, Lisa or Ben, not for the fact that the only thing he was guaranteed to do was fail those he loved.

When his right fist took another cut at the wall he didn’t even register the sickening crunch or the one that followed it. He should have been home with them. Instead he’d been working late at a dead-end job at the local garage like he could seriously just live a happily ever after fairy tale ending.

While Sam was enduring tortures even beyond what Dean could imagine he’d been trying to play make believe. He couldn’t even get that right. Everything he’d ever done had been pointless, a grand fucking waste of nothing.

His eyes focused only enough to lock in on the last thing he wanted to see - himself. Without hesitation his numb fist shattered through the reflection that stared blankly back at him through the building’s window. He didn’t hear the shattering of glass that left shards buried in his battered hand.

Jerking his arm back through the windowpane gouged jagged glass along his forearm. It could never cut deep enough for him to feel it. Hot blood streamed down his arm as he spun back towards the wall. He beat against it with everything he had, his unsteady breaths escalating into heaving grunts.

When he couldn’t get his fists to work he jammed his elbows, shoulders and knees until nothing would work like it should, until finally he truly could feel nothing.

~~~

The sound of people hustling around tugged at the edge of his consciousness. On some level he knew they were moving him. He felt his body being carried and the slight give of the gurney mattress as his limp body was laid on top of it.

“Mr. Winchester?” Latex glove dressed fingers pried his eyelids further open and a bright light followed. “He’s conscious, but still unresponsive.”

“BP is borderline. It looks like serious arterial trauma to the right forearm. If we don’t get him in surgery he’s going to bleed out. What do we got on him?”

Physically he could see them trying to stop the flow of blood, hear them calling to him. He couldn’t care enough to find the words to respond or the muscle function to move. If he was watching one of those stupid medical dramas filmed from the patient POV he would have felt more involved in what was happening.

“There’s no living family. I have his file here...limited medical records starting a little over a year ago. No known allergies and a DNR order.”

“Let’s keep him breathing then. He’s a go for surgery.”

Time held still as he blankly stared past the bustle of people. He wasn’t sure how long it was between the order being called out and the change in the voices and faces around him.

“Every time I think I’ve seen it all...how does someone physically even do this to themselves?”

“You didn’t see the bodies of his wife and kid.”

“This is that Winchester guy? Poor bastard. To come home to find that...”

A facemask pressed firmly over his nose and mouth. He didn’t fight it or wonder why it was there. There was no protest from his body and only relief in his mind as his eyes began to drift closed.

~~~

A blissful drug induced haze hung over him. Distantly he watched a nurse examine bandages that were patched around the whole of his arms. Experimentally he tried to flex his fingers, but could barely feel them.

“He’s coming out of it. Vitals still look good. Mr. Winchester?”

Dean’s eyes fluttered open. For a brief moment the world was okay, but even drugs couldn’t stop reality from tumbling back. Agony twisted his features not at the physical pain that he couldn’t yet feel, but at the return of the emptiness that there was no cure for.

Slowly he recognized the psych evaluator sitting at his bedside after the man that had been talking left. The polite smile on her lips couldn’t hide the concern written across her face. He wondered what she was so worried about.

“Maybe we can talk now?” she asked.

He sloppily scooted himself up so that he was propped against the pillows. “Sure. Let’s talk about when I can get out of here.”

With her clipboard set aside, she leaned forward in her chair. “They’re going to need to keep you here for a couple of days, but then we can discuss your choices for a facility.”

The words didn’t register, not at first. When they did his gaze grew distant. His heart quietly accelerated in silent panic. It had finally happened. His shell had fractured far enough that even the world could see there was nothing left behind the walls.

“You wanna ship me off to the nuthouse.”

It wasn’t an accusatory statement, just a statement of fact. His eyes wandered down to his bandaged arms. Tentatively he tested the rest of his body to feel the braces on his knees and the strange stiffness in his shoulders.

There wasn’t much he could remember about what had happened, but he knew the injuries hadn’t been taken killing Lisa and Ben’s murderer as he imagined. He didn’t blame the evaluator for thinking he was insane. He was. It just didn’t matter.

“Dean, you’re not crazy. This just isn’t something you can deal with alone.”

“Well, there isn’t anyone else so I guess that's that. Awesome talk.”

“How long has it been since you lost your brother?”

Dean hadn’t lost Sam. He knew exactly where his brother was, heard his screams in every gap of silence. For Sam it had been a couple decades short of two centuries. For Dean it felt longer.

There would be no release for Sam. Nothing his brother could do or say would relieve the torture. There was no razor to lift or apocalypse to start. There was just the tearing away of every piece of Sam’s soul until there was nothing left.

Someday, some other spineless son of a bitch would bust open Lucifer’s cage and when they did Sam would be at Lucifer’s side, not Dean’s. When that happened Dean would be alone in heaven, just like Lisa and Ben were alone now, trapped in a false eternal bliss. The braces on Dean’s fingers prevented his hands from curling into fists. He forced himself to take in a breath of air only so he could speak.

“You should go spend your time with someone you can save.”

“You married your wife after your brother’s death, didn’t you? He would’ve wanted that for you.” Dean took in a sharp breath, clenching his jaw and staring down at his sheets. “I saw a photo of your wife and son with you. The way they looked at you...they wouldn’t want this for you. Neither would your brother.”

He wanted to tell her to shove it. This woman didn’t know anything about his brother or his family or him. So why the hell did she have to be right? Sam had given everything for this shit hole of a world, Lisa and Ben had rearranged their entire lives to take him in. He really was all that was left when he should’ve been the first to go.

“I was supposed to protect them.”

“If you had been home, he would have killed you too,” she replied. “Everything happens...”

“If you say ‘for a reason’...”

His rasped words strongly enough carried the threat he couldn’t bring himself to speak to the sad eyes staring at him. Yesterday those would have been Lisa’s eyes and Ben would have been sitting in the corner chair, impatiently swinging his legs. Two years ago it would have been Sam.

There was no reason and he was beginning to realize that it hurt. Since he’d lifted Lisa and Ben’s bodies into his arm, refusing to let the authorities take them, he’d felt only a vacant numbness. The intake of a shuddering breath brought with it a pain so heavy he knew it would crush him, but at least he could feel it.

“They wouldn’t want you to be alone.”

In an instant it all surfaced and in that instant he wasn’t alone. A complete stranger living in this world he’d condemned moved forward to sit on the bed beside him and drew him carefully into her arms. When shock gave way to the need for release, he could scarcely return the gesture with the state of his broken body. He could only lean in, resting his head against her as the tears he’d thought he’d lost forever cascaded over his cheeks.

She moved in closer with one arm wrapped around his body and the other holding his head as air became a commodity between chocked breaths. And with her touch he realized he was still here, still tangible. Sam had won the war. The least Dean could do was live in the world his brother had saved for him.


End file.
